The thing turned, its fear welled, and it fell.
Jehannes was shouting for his men.
‘Stand!’ called the captain. It sounded like a squeal. But Wilful Murder roared it from behind him. ‘Stand!’ he called.
Jehannes paused.
‘The tower!’ the captain insisted.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
Thorn’s burst of rage fell like a hammer.
Harmodius watched the strike come in, helpless to stop it, a whole heartbeat to see his death wash at him in sickly green radiance.
He felt the fortress’s Hermetic defences go back up, and knew it would never be enough.
The great works that powered the defence were brilliantly designed – they funnelled what they could, channelled some more, reflected yet more. They were so well artificed that they almost seemed intelligent. New practitioners attempted to meet force with force – skilled practitioners knew to meet force with guile, deflecting the opponent’s energy like a skilled swordsman. Most static sigils were easily overcome, but this . . .
In the moment of his annihilation, Harmodius thought Who built this?
The wards caught, turned, and covered. But there was only so much the ancient sigils could do.
And the rest burst through the great wards like a river in flood bursting through a levy.
He raised a hand.
The Abbess reached past him, and stopped the overflow of the great spell of wrath just short of their place on the wall. She flung it back down the path of the casting.
She reached out and put her left hand on his shoulder.
I know nothing of this sort of war she said. Let me in.
Through her, he could feel her sisters, singing plainchant in the chapel. Their power did not fuel the Abbess directly. It was far subtler than that.
Despite the situation, he had to pause to admire the magnificence of the structure. The fortress. The sigils. The sisters, who could maintain the power of the sigils indefinitely, regardless of their individual weakness.
He wondered, yet again, who made this?
Then he gripped her spiritual hand in his own and led her through the great bronze doors of his palace, like a bridegroom leading a bride. ‘Welcome,’ he said.
She was a much younger and less spiritual woman, in the Aethereal. Suddenly he had a frisson of memory. Of this same woman dressed for hunting, standing in his master’s chamber, tapping her whip on her hand. Trying to get his master to go out riding.
He dismissed the memory, although here it took on a visible aspect, so that she saw it and smiled. ‘He was the worst lover imaginable,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘He didn’t hunt, didn’t ride, wouldn’t dance. He was always late, and made many promises he couldn’t keep.’ She shrugged. ‘I wanted him. And look at the consequences. Some sins do not wash away.’ She spread her arms. ‘It is very nice here.’
He flushed with her praise, as if he was a much younger man. Time in the Aethereal had virtually no meaning so he had no sense of urgency. ‘Did you ever suspect? ‘ he asked carefully. ‘When he turned?’
The Abbess sat in one of his great leather armchairs. She had riding boots under her voluminous riding skirts, which she crossed over the arm of the chair. ‘You know, don’t you, that in old age, one doesn’t easily adopt positions like this,’ she said happily. ‘Ah, to be young.’ She leaned back. ‘You must have asked yourself, many times.’
‘I’ve been largely trapped in his phantasm for many years,’ Harmodius said. ‘But yes. I think of it now. All the time.’
‘I only know that in the months before Chevin he discovered something. Something terrible. I badgered him to tell me, and he would smile and tell me that I wasn’t ready to understand it.’
Harmodius grimaced. ‘He never said as much to me.’
The Abbess nodded. ‘But now you know what he knew. I know it too, now.’
There aren’t many secrets in the Aethereal.
‘Yes,’ he said.
The Abbess shook her head. ‘Any servant of the Order of Saint Thomas knows that the green and the gold are the same,’ she said. ‘Richard was a fool who saw the world entirely in shades of black and white. He still is. A staggering intellect, a tower of puissance, and no common sense whatsoever.’ She shrugged. ‘Enough chatter. My home is being blown to bits. Show me how to use our power to stop him.’
‘Like this,’ he said. ‘But it will be more efficient if you pass me power and I cast.’
In a heartbeat – in no time at all, because in the Aethereal, time had so little meaning – they stood on a balcony of his great palace, looking out over the world of solidity.
In his vision, Thorn stood out like a beacon tagged in green. Harmodius pointed her hand at the thing that had been her lover.
She flooded Harmodius with power.
He made fire.
Lissen Carak – Thorn
For the first time, Thorn paused to raise a shield. His burst of temper was over, and Harmodius’s response had been respectable. No more, but no less.
And the fortress’s defences were back. He had landed some good blows. But now he was risking himself for nothing. He raised a second shield.
Harmodius’ mighty blow rolled away like a child’s stick on a knight’s armour.
Thorn grunted.
It might have been a laugh.
Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight
Tom’s unconscious body took six men to carry and the captain was unwilling to lose the horses that had been left for the Lower Town garrison, so a party of archers cleared the town’s upper gate and opened it. The garrison escaped behind the horses, and the sortie went over the walls via ladders.
It was all going very well, until the daemons struck back.
His rearguard was slow in forming – understandable, in the conditions – and suddenly three of them were down, dead, and a gleaming monster stood over them with a pair of wickedly curved axes gleaming in the soft spring moonlight. Marcus – Jehannes’s valet – and Ser Willem Greville, his armour opened as if he was wearing leather. A third man was face down beside them.
The fear was like a waft of foul air.
There were more daemons behind it – fluid and horrible, arresting and beautiful in their movements. And below them, a legion of boglins, irks and men poured into the town they were leaving.
Just like that, the captain was alone.
‘Run, little man,’ the daemon whispered.
The captain reached inside and found Prudentia.
The working was already aligned.
He opened the door before she could protest – he was so much faster than he had been.
The green whistled through the crack, a tempest-
